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by buboard 6y ago
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- tenaciousDaniel 6y agoSome friends of mine who live in NYC are actually considering "renting" their addresses for remote employees who get shafted like this. From my perspective, it's the same as registering your business address in Delaware to take advantage of their low tax rates.
- dastx 6y agoWatch as companies start lobbying to make this illegal.
- harryh 6y agoIt's already illegal to lie in a contract. It's called fraud.
- adrr 6y agoIt probably is illegal due to issues with taxes. If I put my address in Seattle,wa but i am residing in Astoria, Oregon. I owe Oregon income tax
- Joof 6y agoJust route all your work through your home in Seattle!
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoFor tax purposes, that is already illegal. I.e. most (all?) states determine your residency based on where you actually sleep a majority of the year. My guess is that FB will base it on where you claim residency for tax purposes, so if you lie about it you're committing tax fraud.
- mullen 6y agoIn a round about way, is this not already illegal? If I live in Ohio but I represent myself to my employer that I live in NYC, am I not committing state income tax fraud against Ohio? NYC would probably love this since people who don't live in NYC and don't use its services pay NYC taxes, but Ohio would hate this because the person lives in Ohio and pays no state taxes. EDITED: Also, you could not get a driver's license in Ohio since you have to live there to get one. Forget about registering cars, owning property and paying for anything with a credit card in your own name.
- BurningFrog 6y agoYou have a lot of arbitrage to play with just inside California.
- Gibbon1 6y agoOh yeah just go online and search for houses under $250k. A bunch are out in the boondocks with bad internet, but not all of them.
- neutronicus 6y agoOne hopes lawmakers would let it continue for irony's sake
- jbroman 6y agoIt seems pretty unwise to defraud your employer like that.
- dastx 6y agoWhy is it defrauding though? They want to lower your salary despite you having proven that you're worth that salary.
- jbroman 6y agoBecause by doing this you have misrepresented the truth in order to extract more money from your employer than you agreed (presumably, in your employment contract). (As I commented elsewhere, whether you think paying by local cost of living is the right policy is valid to debate but isn't the point here.)
- harryh 6y agoBecause it's lying. That's what fraud is. "But I had a good reason for lying!" is not a defense.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoCome on, this is just ridiculous. "Why can't I lie to my employer in a contractual agreement if they did something I don't like?" I mean, the vast, vast majority of FB employees can easily get jobs with other companies. If you don't like it, leave.
- booleandilemma 6y ago
- sturgill 6y agoIgnoring any potential ethical questions, I wonder how that works for state tax purposes?
- zests 6y agoI’m pretty sure you pay taxes to the state you physically are in while doing the work. So if you leave NY temporarily and work remotely from FL you will no longer have income tax while you are in FL.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoBut then you have to prove to NY that you were in FL. States like NY and CA will claw every dollar they can from you and if they see you're getting paid to an in-state address, good luck proving you weren't actually in-state. You likely won't be able to get back the money your company automatically deducted from your paycheck.
- coredog64 6y agoNot tax advice, so consult your own professional preparer: NY state has first dollar claim if your employer says your job is in NY regardless of your physical address. If, for example, you live in NJ but commute into NY, you’re paying NY state tax with no opt-out. NJ credits residents for NY taxes but then gets their money via property taxes. NYC is even crazier, with part time residents going so far as to take daily pictures of themselves with local papers to prove that they reside outside the city more than half the year to avoid NYC income tax.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoThey end up having to pay NY state taxes since that's what your employer is reporting.
- dionidium 6y agoYou pay state taxes based on where you actually lived, not on where you say you lived, not on where you identify as having lived, not on what you perceive to be your main residence, and not on where you own a PO box. You pay state taxes based on where you actually lived, as in where your physical body was in space and time. And your employer obviously has this information for tax withholding.
- bobthepanda 6y agoNYC in particular might not be a good location for this, since if your W2 lists NYC you are subject to three income taxes (fed, state, city). Seattle would probably be a better choice, as a high-wage, relative low-tax city.
- lumost 6y agoIt'll be tricky for employers to enforce too - surely you'll have people who "live" in SF but travel 60-70% of the time to Colorado. Flying back to the bay for 2 days a week is probably a reasonable CoL arbitrage if you only need housing for 2 days.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- harryh 6y agoNo one registers a business address in Delaware to take advantage of their low taxes. Companies, like people, must pay state and local taxes based on their physical location.
- coredog64 6y agoRight. Delaware is attractive for their business-friendly legal environment.
- dionidium 6y ago> From my perspective, it's the same as registering your business address in Delaware to take advantage of their low tax rates. State tax authorities do not share this perspective.
- sna1l 6y agoI would imagine that because the company is withholding (and reporting) tax at a state level, you'd have to end up paying tax in whatever state you were claiming to live in anyways?